Free Republic

There’s more to Donald Trump’s Middle East trip than billion-dollar contracts, parades of camels and a storm back home over Qatar’s offer to give the president a new Air Force One. A tour narrowly billed by the White House as a chance for Trump to show he’s a master dealmaker is jumbling the region’s geopolitical jigsaw puzzle.Wherever he goes, Trump’s brings disruption that can forge possibilities. And he takes risks – for instance, his decision on this trip to lift sanctions on Syria to give a war-ravaged nation a second chance.But the move revives a perennial question about Trump’s entire...

In his recently-published memoir, “Karen: A Brother Remembers,” actor Kelsey Grammer revealed that two of his preborn children were aborted — experiences that appear to have greatly affected him. While society parrots the idea that abortion is solely a woman’s issue, Grammer’s story of abortion regret underscores the reality that men are also impacted by the killing of their preborn children. “The abortion of my son eats at my soul” According to People, Grammer wrote that in 1974, a former girlfriend aborted their child. Though Grammer said he was “willing” to keep the baby, he “did not plead with her...

Happy times are here again at the gas pump. The price of oil keeps falling, and Americans are filling their tanks for less than $2 a gallon. The government says cheaper gasoline put an extra $100 billion into drivers' wallets last year alone. That seems like it would be good for the economy. Turns out, it might not be. "Is it possible that lower oil prices could actually hurt the U.S. economy?" asks Vipin Arora, an economist with the U.S. Energy Information Administration. "I think the answer could be yes." Arora's findings are based on his own research, so this...

For years, Democrats have decried Republicans as “election deniers,” even using the phrase to justify lawfare against then-former President Donald Trump. But as it turns out, when elections don’t go their way suddenly the process is flawed and democracy is negotiable. On Monday, the credentials committee of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) voted to overturn the results of an election that led to 25-year-old David Hogg being selected as a party vice chair. (Hogg survived the 2018 Parkland School shooting.) But the DNC committee argued the election did not follow proper parliamentary procedures. The decision “will put the issue before...

A South Los Angeles couple face federal charges for allegedly using their car to chase and block immigration officials who were serving a search warrant One of the suspects allegedly told federal agents that the couple were opposed to the immigration agents’ activities A South Los Angeles couple are facing criminal charges for allegedly using their car to try to impede and pursue federal immigration agents who were serving search warrants earlier this year. Gustavo Torres, 28, and Kiara Jaime-Flores, 34, are charged with conspiracy to impede or injure officers, federal prosecutors announced Wednesday. The couple could not be reached...

An international team of scientists has identified similarities in the mechanisms of diabetes and cancer: as the researchers show, the protein PPARγ, which is central to the regulation of metabolic processes, can also influence the growth of prostate cancer cells. PPARγ is already known to be a target of certain drugs used to treat type 2 diabetes. The results of the study indicate that such drugs could also represent a promising approach for the treatment of prostate cancer. PPARγ has been known in diabetes research for quite some time, as it has an influence on insulin sensitivity. For more than...

Iran is ready to sign a nuclear deal with certain conditions with President Donald Trump in exchange for lifting economic sanctions, a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader told NBC News on Wednesday. Ali Shamkhani, a top political, military and nuclear adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is one of the most senior Iranian officials to speak publicly about the ongoing discussions. He said Iran would commit to never making nuclear weapons, getting rid of its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium which can be weaponized, agree to only enrich uranium to the lower levels needed for civilian use,...

“I’m not a color! I’m a person!” #WalkAway from tribalism

As the Washington DC U.S. Attorney, Ed Martin was in position to address the known and documented activity of a variety of former DOJ officials. There’s a strong argument to be made that’s the reason why the DOJ’s corrupt allies in congress moved to eliminate the threat Martin represented. However, their collective result didn’t remove him, nor did it change the objective, it just changed Mr Martin’s title. Washington DC USAO Ed Martin carried the authority of the Attorney General, in the changed dynamic special appointee ADAG Ed Martin now carries the authority of the President of the United States...

The Feds arrested former member of Michigan Army National Guard Ammar Abdulmajid-Mohamed Said for plotting a mass shooting at a military base in Warren, Michigan. The DOJ announced that Said, 19, was charged in a criminal complaint with “attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and distributing information related to a destructive device.” “According to the complaint, Said informed two undercover law enforcement officers of a plan he had devised and formulated to conduct a mass-shooting at the U.S. Army’s Tank-Automotive & Armaments Command (TACOM) facility at the Detroit Arsenal in Warren, Michigan. In April 2025, the...

E. histolytica, shown in green, attacking human white blood cells (Credit: Katherine Ralston). ========================================================================== New analysis by scientists from the University of California, Davis has determined that an invasive ‘Skinwalker’ parasite that kills thousands of people every year uses pieces of its prey’s “skin” as a disguise to evade detection. Dubbed Entamoeba histolytica, previous studies have unlocked several clues on how this deadly parasite, which is typically found in developing countries that lack clean water, can evade the human immune system. However, this is the first to directly observe the single-celled organism donning the remains of a destroyed cell to...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A former FBI agent and Pentagon contractor has sued the founder of a conservative nonprofit known for its hidden camera stings over secretly recorded videos showing the contractor criticizing President Donald Trump to a woman he thought he had taken on a date.Jamie Mannina says in his lawsuit that he was misled by a woman he met on a dating website who held herself out as a politically liberal nurse but who was actually working with the conservative activist James O’Keefe in a sting operation designed to induce Mannina into making “inflammatory and damaging” remarks that could...

SummaryTrump's Middle East focus shifts to Gulf business deals PM Netanyahu's right-wing govt at odds with some U.S. policy shifts U.S.-Israel relations strong but diverging priorities evident, say observers JERUSALEM, May 14 (Reuters) - Israel's right-wing government has maintained a diplomatic silence this week as U.S. President Donald Trump fired off a blizzard of announcements that have shaken Israeli assumptions about their country's standing with its most important ally.Trump's decision to bypass Israel during his current visit to the Middle East had already been seen as a marker of the his administration's increased focus on lucrative business deals with wealthy...

President Trump has long railed against drug traffickers. He has said they should be given the death penalty “for their heinous acts.” On the first day of his second term, he signed an executive order listing cartels as “terrorist organizations.”But many public health and addiction experts fear that his budget proposals and other actions effectively punish people who use drugs and struggle with addiction.The Trump administration has vowed to reduce overdose deaths, one of the country’s deadliest public health crises, by emphasizing law enforcement, border patrols and tariffs against China and Mexico to keep out fentanyl and other dangerous drugs....

Newly re-elected Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is now claiming that his government is a symbol for what he is calling "progressive patriotism". I will now compare some claims made for this way of thinking with the reality of Socialist Left governments. “Albanese begins second term with a new slogan.” Albanese and his party, the ALP, are much better at sloganising than they are at governing. "Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is pledging to strengthen Australia with a second-term agenda that eases division ......." Albanese won the recent election with a brilliantly effective but viciously unfair negative campaign against his conservative...

Ben Cohen, co-founder and former co-owner of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, is a left-wing lunatic. In particular, he is a devoted fan of Hamas’s regime of rape, torture and murder. A loathsome human being, in other words. Now that he is out of the ice cream business, Cohen has nothing better to do than show up at Congressional committee hearings and try to disrupt them. Today, HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy was testifying before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, on the HHS budget. His testimony was interrupted by several protesters whose screaming was incoherent, and who...

The Trump administration has escalated its battle with Harvard University, freezing all future grants and threatening to strip the school’s tax-exempt status. In response, Harvard has adopted some conciliatory measures— rebranding its DEI office and cancelling its racially segregated graduation ceremonies—but, behind the scenes, the university’s discrimination machine continues to operate at full capacity.We’ve obtained a trove of internal documents that reveal Harvard’s racial favoritism in faculty and administrative hiring. The university’s DEI programs are more than “unconscious bias” training. They are vectors for systematic discrimination against disfavored groups: namely, white men. ...***In another hiring guide, “Best Practices for Conducting...

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) claimed Wednesday on MSNBC’s “All In” that the United States was “complicit” in the humanitarian crisis developing in the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Host Chris Hayes said, “There is a real concern once again about mass starvation in Gaza. This is after a blockade that’s been applied by Israeli forces, who say that they are applying it to put pressure on Hamas in the next phase of this deal. The New York Times, running a piece today saying that in private, some Israeli officers admit that Gaza is on the brink of...

Michigan Democrat Shri Thanedar opted against forcing vote on his resolution A long-shot effort by Democratic Rep. Shri Thanedar to force an impeachment vote against President Donald Trump was abruptly pulled Wednesday evening after a group of Democrats signaled they would vote with Republicans to block the move. Moments before a planned vote on a motion to table Thanedar’s impeachment resolution — a procedure that would have effectively killed it for the time being — the Michigan Democrat reversed course and opted not to call up the resolution for floor consideration. “After talking with many colleagues, I have decided not...

Libs of TikTok @libsoftiktok The city council of Providence, Rhode Island, is hosting a flag raising ceremony at the City Hall.What flag, you ask? A Palestinian flag... Providence, RI has been conquered.